HUMANISM IS AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE

by Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho (ngier@uidaho.edu)

 

Religious Liberalism and the Founding Fathers

 

        Humanism, one of the greatest achievements of western civilization, has become a dirty word. Humanism, one of the essential aspects of our American heritage, has become an un-American word. Something is terribly wrong when a good term like this is abused by people who ought to know better.

 

        It used to be that all of America's ills were blamed on a "communist" conspiracy, but now this has been replaced by a "humanist" conspiracy. Humanists are being targeted as the source of every "evil," from homosexuality to one-world government. The fact that the American Communist Party had become fossilized and a laughingstock did not deter earlier conspiracy theorists. And now to propose that the 3000-member American Humanist Association has a stranglehold on our minds is an insult to all intelligent Americans.

 

        Communism, by and large, deserves the bad press that it receives. One can understand how Communism has become a dirty word. Many lives and much freedom have been lost in the name of Communism, just as formerly many were lost in the name of Christianity. But as far as I know, no one has ever been killed in the name of humanism.

 

        This attack is truly incredible if one considers that the humanism of Socrates has become the basis for our ethical individualism; the humanism of the Greek Sophists gave law its adversarial system and inspired Renaissance humanists to extend education to the masses as well as to the aristocracy; the Christian humanism of Aquinas and Erasmus helped temper negative views of human nature found in the biblical tradition; and the humanism of the Enlightenment gave us political rights, representative government, and free market economics. It has been said that "the pluralistic, democratic, secular, humanistic state...is one of the greatest political inventions of all time . . . "

 

        Why has this innocent name been blackened? Why has the humanist become the new Satan and anti-Christ? The Religious Right must certainly take most of the blame, even, regrettably so, some of the best evangelical theologians. John Jefferson Davis, who otherwise makes some positive contributions to systematic theology, claims that an "ntirevelational" humanism is the cause of mental illness, international terrorism, and other evils.

 

        Some of the blame also lies with narrow-minded humanists who have insisted that only their views are Atrue@ humanism. When some humanists say that only those who reject a belief in God and put their trust squarely in the scientific method are real humanists, they are distorting the meaning of humanism. When someone like B. F. Skinner, one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto, claims that human beings have no freedom nor dignity, this is also a significant deviation from traditional humanism.

 

        The late Jerry Falwell charges that humanism "challenges every principle on which America was founded. It advocates abortion-on-demand, recognition of homosexuals, free use of pornography, legalizing of prostitution and gambling, the free use of drugs... and the socialization of all humanity into a world commune."  Needless to say, traditional humanism is not bound at all to any of these positions. Many of the humanists in the Libertarian Party would agree with most of this list, but as laissez-faire capitalists, they would definitely reject the world commune idea. There are also many Christian humanists who would disagree with most of these points. I shall also demonstrate that, contrary to Falwell's claims, America was founded on humanist principles.

 

        The development of modern humanism went hand-in-hand with the rise of what I call Aclassical liberalism.@ Our word Aliberal@ comes from the Latin adjective liberalis, which means Apertaining to a free person.@ In feudal times a free person had to be born from noble stock, so that the liberi were then contrasted with the servi, the feudal serfs. Classical liberals challenged this distinction and declared that all human beings, whatever their social status, were from the same universal, noble stock.

 

        Classical liberals viewed individuals as self-legislative beings, moral agents who, by the use of reason and experience, decided for themselves how their lives were to be fashioned and led. Classical liberals challenged the authority of governments and churches to interfere unnecessarily in individual lives. These first liberals were responsible for the basic freedoms that many people now enjoy--religious, intellectual, economic, and political.

 

        Our Founding Fathers were definitely part of this liberal, humanist tradition. Norman Cousins even suggests that Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke and David Hume were the "invisible Founding Fathers." All of them retained a belief in God, but Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Paine, and Franklin rejected major Christian doctrines, including original sin, the deity of Christ, the Trinity, etc.

 

        The famous Jefferson-Adams correspondence is filled with references to their common reading in the Greeks and the humanistic philosophers of the Enlightenment. It is also replete with criticisms of orthodox Christianity, especially Calvinism. In one letter Jefferson said that "it would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme Him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin."

 

        Other early Americans like John Jay, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams had much more conservative views about Christianity, but they too agreed to put personal religious views aside and to establish a secular state free from all religious doctrine. The most striking proof of our Founding Fathers' belief in a secular state was the Treaty of Tripoli, whose eleventh article begins: "As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...." President Washington negotiated this treaty, the Senate ratified it without any recorded debate, and President Adams signed it.

 

        I was surprised to find that Jerry Falwell appears to agree with this position. In an interview in Christianity Today (September, 1981) he stated that "America is not a Christian nation, it has never been a Christian nation, and it is never going to be a Christian nation." Then, with very few intervening words, he manages to Christianize America as a nation "under God" which has survived by following divine principles. Falwell completes the full circle of a logical contradiction by concluding that "God has raised up America in these last days for the cause of world evangelism and for the protection of his people, the Jews. I don't think America has any other right or reason for existence other than those two purposes."

 

        One would look in vain in the documents of our Founding Fathers for such a parochial reason for America to exist. America exists not for the protection of the Jewish state or the evangelizing of the world. America does not exist as a mere means for any specialized interests, religious or secular. The humanist ideal for America is that America exists as an end itself: to allow for the greatest fulfillment of human freedom and dignity.

 

        We have seen that traditional humanists believe that human beings have intrinsic value and are autonomous centers of value with free-will and moral responsibility. They hold that all persons have inalienable rights, including free expression and inquiry. They also use reason, not divine revelation, as the guide for moral action and education; but this does not mean that humanism is anti-Christian or anti-religion in general.